Nearly 50 years ago, Richard Nixon became the first and only American president to resign following the Watergate scandal.
Now, former President Donald Trump is running for office again, as he faces criminal charges for his alleged actions to overturn the 2020 election.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the reporters who uncovered Watergate, spoke about Trump’s presidential bid Friday with Tom Hudson on The Florida Roundup.
Amid the current election cycle, Woodward said the question remains if the U.S. Constitution will be used the same way it did 50 years ago.
“That’s the test this country is going through right now,” Woodward said. “Will it work again?”
Bernstein cast doubt on the matter, saying the nation’s system of checks and balances isn’t holding up well.
“In the case of Donald Trump, we have a Republican Party that has decided quite decisively that they are willing to abide a criminal president and former president of the United States" Bernstein said. "The system might not be able to protect us from such a president or presidential hopeful as the character of Donald Trump.”
“The reality is that Florida reflects the country in an almost perfect way. And to be quite honest, when I get a phone call or an email from somebody from Florida, it immediately grabs my attention, more than an effort to contact me from somebody in another state. We always learn something about the country from Florida.”Bob Woodward
In November 2020, Bernstein released the names of 21 Republican senators who had privately expressed contempt for Trump, including Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
“And of course, there might have been one denial, I think, of the 21. So what does that mean? It means that Trump is held in great fear by the Republicans in the Senate and the House,” Bernstein said.
He noted support for the former president runs deeper than some people may think.
“The idea that this is just a bunch of discontented males swinging beer from a can and uttering a lot of prejudicial thoughts, as too much of the opposition would characterize it, is nonsense," Bernstein said. "This is a movement that has captured all kinds of imaginations and views that perhaps have been latent in the culture but had been laying there. So this is about the country. This is not just about Donald Trump.”
Bernstein even said the U.S. is in a “cold civil war” ignited by Trump, although it began years prior over issues like immigration and abortion.
“… Trump has played that cold civil war like a genius general,” Bernstein said.
While Trump’s 2024 run has national implications, it also speaks to the current condition of Florida politics. Woodward reflected on why there’s a certain magnetism around the Sunshine State.
“The reality is that Florida reflects the country in an almost perfect way," Woodward said. "And to be quite honest, when I get a phone call or an email from somebody from Florida, it immediately grabs my attention, more than an effort to contact me from somebody in another state. We always learn something about the country from Florida.”
Woodward and Bernstein will be at two events — “Watergate to Today: Journalism, Accountability and the Current Challenges to American Democracy” — at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton on Feb. 8, and in Jupiter on Feb. 9. For tickets and more information, click here.
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